I didn't enjoy this one as much as Angela's Ashes. Still a good read though.

Picked up at our Bookcrossing Meeting.

Thanks!

Don't think I'll ever read this (tales of terrible childhoods are just not my tasse de the) so making it AVL.

Don't listen to me though: nighteyes enjoyed it and I know lots of people who have too.

From Amazon: (4 stars)

Dark secrets and shame, January 10, 2006
Reviewer: Luc Reynaert from Beernem, Belgium
After his struggle for sheer survival in Ireland as a child and an adolescent, Frank McCourt retained the lesson his uncle taught him (‘Make up your own mind’) and took his fate in his own hand. He immigrated to the US.
Having had a poor education, he survives on low paid jobs with the help of a not so uninterested gay priest, who has privileged contacts with the US Democratic Party.
Without a high school certificate, he nevertheless gets through university to become a teacher.
By fighting in the ‘blackboard jungle’, he assures a decent life for himself and his relatives left in Ireland.

These memoirs are heavily tainted by the author’s Catholic education and ‘guilty’ conscience, full of ‘dark secrets and shame’: ‘If I had any belief left in anything I could go to confession, but where is the priest who could hear my sins without throwing his hands up in disgust.’

From being rather cynical and direct in ‘Angela’s Ashes’ under the biting impact of hunger and coldness, the author’s style evolved to a more distanced, ironic and less rebellious texture.

A very worth-while read.

In a probably vain attempt to declutter, am offering this on www.readitswapit.co.uk too.

RELEASE NOTES:

To Matthew Worley in London

Picked up on readitswapit.

CAUGHT IN LONDON LONDON UK